Chasing Pavements
by Meredith Austen
Summary: There have been rumors on the street that Raymond Reddington has surrendered to the FBI after evading capture for years and is assisting them in tracking down a blacklist. And Division leader Percy knows he's on that list. Using Alexandra Udinov as leverage against the FBI, Division thinks they have the upper hand. But Elizabeth Keen has other ideas.


_Disclaimer: I do not any of the characters or agencies from "Nikita" or "The Blacklist." This was just an idea that popped into my head after I fell in love with both Elizabeth Keen and Alexandra Udinov._

 _Author's Note: There have been rumors on the street that Raymond Reddington has surrendered to the FBI after evading capture for years and is assisting them in tracking down a blacklist. And Division leader Percival "Percy" Rose knows he's on that list. The secret government agency in which Percy is in charge has gone rogue. After illegally obtaining enough money to sustain itself without government funding, Percy is out to over throw the government with the help of his secret army comprised of young adults with a criminal background. Desperate to build his army of assassins for an inevitable fight against the FBI, Percy sends out his agents to pick up new recruits. Michael and Nikita are Percy' top agents but both have recently began to question their orders. They are sent out on a mission to capture Alexandra Udinov, a sex slave who has a connection with someone on Reddington's side. Using Alex as leverage against the FBI, Division thinks they have the upper hand. But Elizabeth Keen has other ideas._

* * *

The brothel was run by Gustavo Kirchoff and was the place for New York City elite to go for a good time. Kichoff had girls sent over from Russia every few months to keep his inventory fresh for his clientele. After they were too old or too undesirable, Kirchoff had them sent back to Russia with nothing more than the clothes on their back. Only a hand full of the girls made it past their eighteenth birthday in the brothel.

But Alexandra Udinov was different. Alexandra was sold to Kichoff after her life went up in flames. Her father and mother were both killed in a house fire, leaving Zetrov, an energy and multi-media conglomerate started by her father, to Sergei Semak. Semak's right hand man, Ari Tasarov, knew Alexandra was worth more dead than alive. So he sold her to Kichoff with the promise of her never returning to Russia.

Alexandra had built up a defense when it came to entertaining the men and sometimes women who spent their money to be with her. The walls around every aspect of Alexandra's heart and mind were so high and so thick that no one would ever be able to get close to her again. She looked into the mirror of the dimly lit room and adjusted her breasts in the corset before fluffing her hair one final time. Taking a deep breath, Alexandra made her way out onto the catwalk.

The crowd went wild as Alexandra teased them by only sticking one leg out from behind the curtain; her signature black stockings were a dead giveaway as to whose legs they were. Alexandra threw the beaded curtains to the side as she walked the runway with all the poise of a trained model. She found the pole at the end of the runway and began to do her routine. Her tanned, toned body moved effortlessly as her muscles supported her body on the pole. Dollar bills began flying at her as she kept scanning the room.

She never knew what she was looking for. Most nights, her eyes looked into the same faces as the night before. Sometimes she would catch a glance of a top politician she knew about only from the small, run down TV that played in the basement of the brothel where all the girls slept on run down cots and piles of dirty blankets. Under Alexandra's pile there was a locket that contained the only picture of her parents and a small box with the cash she was able to keep hidden from Kirchoff. She had plans one day of running away; the opportunity just hadn't arrived yet.

As Alexandra was finishing her scan of the room, her eyes landed on a couple who she had never seen before yet something about the man was familiar. He tipped his black hat at her as the woman he was with kept looking around the room, as if she was watching her back. Alexandra's eyes lingered longer than she wanted so she quickly looked away as she spun around the pole. When she found the spot in the room where the strangers were, they were gone. Alexandra began searching for the mysterious couple but the loud sound of a machine gun firing shots into the air sent everyone running in different directions.

Alexandra darted down the runway, keeping low to avoid the rounds from hitting her. Something caught her eye just as she was about to run through the curtain. The couple from earlier was bunkered down behind a table and firing at the encroaching gunners. Pausing a moment to study them, Alexandra tried to remember where she has seen the man before.

The gunfire growing closer behind her sent Alexandra running through the curtain to the back of the brothel and down the stairs to the hidden basement. She joined the other frantic girls in grabbing their belongings before running away. In her nearly ten years at the brothel, nothing like this had ever happened before. There had been police raids, yes, but never gunfire.

And the escape door to the basement had never been left unguarded like it was that night. While the other girls were frantically hiding, Alexandra grabbed her locket out form under her pile of blankets before taking the money out of the box and stuffing it down her corset. She could hear footsteps on the stairs as she darted across the room to the escape door. She climbed the three rung ladder to the door and turned the doorknob a few times. When it didn't open, she fished a pin out of her hair and picked the lock. Throwing the door open, Alexandra shivered in the December air. She jumped off the ladder and motioned for the other girls to follow her.

" _Syuda_!" Alexandra was fluent in both Russian and English, at the request of her father. She was supposed to take over the family empire when she was older and Nikolai Udinov knew his daughter needed to know both languages. Alexandra waited until the basement was empty of girls before climbing the stairs again. As she was about to lift her body out of the doorway, someone grabbed her legs. "Let me go!"

Alexandra kicked the attacker yet the attackers grip didn't loosen. The attacked pinned her to the ground although they were roughly the same size.

"I'm not here to hurt you, Alexandra." The attacker took off her ski mask as her long hair fell out of it. "I'm here to help you."

"Who are you?" Alexandra yelled as the woman got off of her and stood up. "How do you know who I am?"

"I'm am one of the good guys." The woman pointed at the open basement door as the sound of a strong body hitting the door on the other side of the room made Alexandra jump. "Now go. Because they're not the good guys."

Alexandra hesitated for a second before doing as she was told as the woman followed behind her. The woman grabbed Alexandra's arm and lead her to an awaiting car. She opened the backdoor and threw Alexandra inside before jumping into the front seat. The man in the front seat was unmasked with a five o'clock shadow.

"Who are you?" Alexandra yelled at them from the backseat.

"I thought you were going to sedate her." The man gripped the steering wheel tighter as he sped up the small car, weaving in and out of cars.

"She's fine." The woman turned around in her seat and smiled at Alexandra. "I'm Nikita. And this is Michael."

"What are you? Like FBI or something?"

"No. Not really."

"Shut up, Niki."

"Michael." Nikita put a hand on Michael's arm. "We'll explain everything when we get to Division."

"Division?" Alexandra sat on the edge of her seat. "What's Division? Where are we going? Who are you people? What's going on?"

"You couldn't have just sedated her?" Frustrated, Alexandra spit in Michael's face, causing him to swerve into the other lane for a moment. "Shit! Niki! Shut her up now before I do it for you!"

"Why don't you just answer me!"

"I can't do that right now, Alexandra." In one quick motion, Nikita spun around in her seat and plunged a needle into Alexandra's bare arms. "I'm sorry. I'll explain everything soon."

Alexandra could feel herself slipping into sleep as the drugs because to course through her system. Just before she slipped out of consciousness, she heard Nikita say something about a guy named Reddington beating them to the case.

"It'll be fine, Niki. We have what he wants."

* * *

"We lost them!" Elizabeth Keen had ran after the car as far as she could before she gave in to the lost cause. She put her hands on the back of her head as she took a few deep breaths. Raymond Reddington came up behind her with his hand in his hand, stopping just short of her. Liz turned around and looked at him. "Why didn't you stop them? You had a clean shot!"

"I didn't. And I couldn't risk shooting the girl. We need her."

" _You_ need her." Liz quickly corrected as she kicked at the ground and began walking back to their car. Reddington let her walk a few feet away before he spoke again.

"You need her too. You just don't know it yet."

Stopping on a dime, Liz turned around to face Reddington, whose back was still to her.

"Will you stop that? Stop with the vagueness!" Liz closed the gap between them as Reddington turned around. "Just tell me what we're doing. You've told me she isn't on the blacklist so why is a stripper so important?"

"Because she's more than a stripper, Lizzie!" Reddington put his hand on her shoulder before walking toward the car. "Do you know who those people are that took her? They're Division agents."

"Division agents?" Liz's face scrunched up in confusion. "But I thought…"

"Everyone thought they were disbanded. But they weren't. Percy took Division underground, literally. He has a training bunker somewhere that ever I don't know where it's at and he's training the next crop of assassins to kill everyone in the government until he gets what he wants."

"And what is that exactly?"

"His audio-animatronics likeness in the Hall of Presidents at Disney World, of course." Reddington put his hat back on as he continued to walk toward the black SUV. Liz paused for a moment as she tried to put the pieces into the puzzle Reddington had been slowly revealing to her.

"So he wants to be president?"

"Oh, Lizzie, that's only the beginning of what Percy wants. And that _girl_ ," Reddington pointed toward the direction they last saw the getaway car, "she's the only one who can stop him."


End file.
